Hydrodynamic Simulations of Astrophysical Jets

Abstract

{We present recent results of our three-dimensional (3-D) simulations of astrophysical jets. These efforts use the the PLUTO code (Mignone \textit{et al. 2007}) run in a highly parallel environment for the hydrodynamic, magneto-hydrodynamic (MHD), relativistic hydrodynamic (RHD), and relativistic, magnetohydrodynamic (RMHD) simulations. In this recent work, we focus on RMHD simulations. We also continue our investigation using particle-in-cell simulations to benchmark a wave-population model of the two-stream instability and associated plasma instabilities in order to determine the energy deposition and momentum transfer rates for these modes of the jet-ambient medium interactions. As noted previoiusly, we believe that ``simple HD, MHD, RHD, and RMHD simulations are unable to show the real effects of very small scale plasma processes. Thus, these effects are being considered for use in a multi-scale code that incorporates energy deposition rate and momentum transfer from strong plasma turbulence generated by the interaction of the astrophysical jet with the ambient medium through which it propagates (Beall, \textit{2010}). In this work, we show some results from the modeling of these jets for a fully 3-D Cartesian simulation of relativistic jets using the PLUTO code in the RMHD regime. \noindent \textbf{Keywords}: jets, active galaxies, blazars, intracluster medium, non-linear dynamics, plasma astrophysics, computational fluid dynamics, relativistic, magnetized fluid flows.}